What Game Companies Can Learn from US News & World Report

Before the coming of the Internet, US News and World Report was "the conservative news magazine," competing with Time and Newsweek. 

With the rise of the Web and the decline of magazines, they've been known for their annual Guide to US Colleges, which evolved from an annual "theme" issue.

In June, 2008 the magazine went from weekly to twice-a-month.  In December, 2008 they became a monthly.  The drop from 52 to 12 issues per year took just 6 months.

Three months ago, the Washington Post sold rival magazine Newsweek.  The price? One U.S. Dollar, the assumption of Newsweek's debt, and a pledge to make the magazine work without huge staff cuts.

This month US News announced they were ending magazine subscriptions altogether. They'll have a newsstand edition (cheaper to distribute) and special issues, but most resources will go to their 7-million-user online news site.

So what does this have to do with games?

Throughout history there are tales of Generals who burned the bridges behind their own advancing troops.

Why?  So the soldiers saw that retreat was impossible and that their only path to survival was to go forward.

U.S. News is burning bridges.  A magazine with no subscribers has to focus on its website.

Despite this year's slow sales, there is a large, solid underlying U.S. console business.  Kinect and Move are both doing well.  XBLA and PSN are growing, but their ascendency over DVD sales is not imminent.

But what if you're not EA or Activision Blizzard or Sony or Microsoft?  What if you're a company with less than $500 million a year in sales?

Time to start reading the case studies for US News.  The console packaged goods business is a big company game, and everything else is going digital.

If you work for a smaller company, are there money-losing categories or initiatives that steal mindshare, money and time from the new business models?

Has it gotten almost impossible to fund certain kinds of traditional titles?

What would happen if you stopped trying to do titles the old way, and placed all your bets on doing XBLA or PSN or DLC or online or casual or iPhone or Facebook games?

If your company just keeps doing things the same old way, how long until it will be sold for one US dollar?

And that, as the headline says, is What Game Companies Can Learn from U.S. News and World Report.

 

Do you disagree?  Use the comments box below to share your opinion.

 

Copyright (c) 2010, Don Daglow.  All Rights Reserved.

Comments

[Frank T. Gilson]

I don't disagree that a game development company's focus needs to reflect modern platforms such as mobile (iPhone, etc.) and online (Facebook, etc.)

I think, however, that the business model focus of a modern game development company needs to move away from work for hire under fixed terms or one-time retail sales and instead to maintainable revenue streams.

It's the money and how you get it that keeps your company not just alive, but profitable.

[Elifbb]

As long as we are talking about "media", I definitely agree that developers must consider up-to-date platforms and technologies. I also think that innovation cannot be done without black sheeps (or purple cows ;)). I think this is a matter of divers constraints for our development process such as platforms, gamer tendencies, evolving genres and digital relationships, which we should check often in case there seems to be a need to burn bridges.

[starcraft 2 cheats]

Fully agreed with your points on this post.